Tag: Indigenous Peoples

“What we’ve been seeing in the past has been that the rainforests of Central Africa, and other regions around the world actually, have been treated as wildernesses which are free from human occupation, and to be preserved in some kind of natural state primarily for their wildlife.”

The International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) has approved a motion urging governments to prohibit industrial activities like mining, dam building, oil and gas extraction, logging, and road building from national parks and indigenous peoples’ and community conserved territories and areas (ICCAs).

Held once every four years, the 2016 World Conservation Congress closes tomorrow in Hawai’i. IUCN’s website describes it as bringing together “several thousand leaders and decision-makers from government, civil society, indigenous peoples, business, and academia, with the goal of conserving the environment and harnessing the solutions nature offers to global challenges.”

There is no accurate figure for the total number of people evicted worldwide to make way for conservation. Governments tend not to keep records of how many people forest guards booted out of their homes during the establishment of protected areas.

Straddling Equateur and Bandundu provinces on the eastern flank of the Congo River, the 741,000 hectare Tumba Lediima Reserve is an area of undoubted biodiversity value. It harbours important populations of bonobos and some of the most important swamp forest on the planet. But conservation measures are having serious impacts…